Remembering the 4,700 miners who died in North Staffordshire's coal industry

"The coal miner spends long hours with sudden death. Destruction can come in a dozen different ways" - Johnny Cash.

I've never understood how or why generations of men and boys in North Staffordshire were mentally able to work, up to seven days a week, semi-naked at a hot, damp coal face up to for 12 hours a day with the constant risk of death only the chip of a pick away.

Yet more than 30,000 miners worked underground at the start of the 20th century did exactly that, helping to drive North Staffordshire's burgeoning steel and pottery industries.

Now a new dataset painstakingly put together retired miner John Lumsdon highlights the bravery of the miners in the constant risk of death and disaster.

Mr Lumsdon, aged 86, from Longton, has created a spreadsheet listing 4,715 men and boys who were killed in the North Staffordshire coalfields since 1793.

I've then mapped the locations of these fatalities using grid reference data listed in Allan C Baker's Industrial Locomotives of North Staffordshire and cross-checked against an eight-year project to locate every North Staffordshire colliery by Jim Worgan. You can explore the map online at The Sentinel website.

The first thing that stands out is just the sheer scale of the mining industry. It's more than 15 years since the Silverdale pit closed and easy to forget this given the regeneration that's taken place across the city.

When you consider that the 230 pits that claimed lives listed account for around half of all the mines that were sunk in North Staffordshire, you realise just how dangerous every mine was, large or small.

Then when you consider that most of the mines would have needed railways to move coal from the pit face to the potteries you realise that the whole region would have been criss-crossed with dozens of train tracks steel tracks carrying freight.

Drilling down into the data also reveals the use of boys as labour. While not every casualty has an age listed, at least 30 boys were killed since 1793, with the youngest being eight-year-old G Riley who was killed in the Bignall Hill pit on September 26, 1836.

At the age of eight, I was more worried about learning my times tables than consider the prospect of working down a pit.

John's data also reveals the importance of mining to the region, the legislative changes to improve safety and also its decline.

On average, 14 people were killed each year, however there is a sharp escalation in casualties per decade throughout the 19th century until a peak in the 1870s when 660 men and boys died during the decade.

This increase was largely driven by the expansion of mining to feed the demands for fuel during the industrial revolution. In 1800, there were between 3,000 and 5,000 miners in North Staffordshire. By 1874, it was up to 20,758 with a workforce extracting four million tons a year. To put that into context, that's enough fuel to power every family home in Stoke-on-Trent for more than three years - based on current energy usage estimates.

However, the constant risk of fatalities created by the deadly combination of explosive gases, mineshaft collapse and working more than a mile below the surface of the earth led to legislative change. A Government commission in 1842 led directly to a ban on employing boys younger than 11 and the introduction of mining inspectors, who in turn helped to drive up standards.

As a result, the average age of a miner killed steadily rises from around 21 in the 1830s to 35 a century later. The average age continues to rise after the nationalisation of the industry in 1947 - although this reflects the ageing population of miners over time.

Even so, the risk of major catastrophe never disappeared. The figures show there were six accidents which led to more than 50 people being killed.

It's easy to focus on the large-scale disasters such as at Minnie Pit or Diglake where more than 100 miners were killed by fire and drowning respectively yet four per cent of all accidents involved more than one fatality.

For instance, few will know, let alone commemorate the fact that 12 people died on February 25 99 years ago in the New Hem Heath pit - which would now stand in the shadow of a primary school in Chesterton.

John's work also helps to give clues as to why men and boys would return to the mines despite the risks.

While generous pay rates helped - the average miner earned £4.06 a week in 1920 (about £160 in today's money), compared with £2.43 for a potbank worker - there was a strong family ethic in which son followed father down the mines.

John's data shows that at least three fathers and sons were killed on the same day.

Despite the conditions - miners would take toilet breaks on their shovels before hurling the excrement into the same bucket into which coal was deposited on its journey to the surface - a report by Samuel Scriven into the working conditions of miners for the 1842 Children's Employment Commission most would prefer to be working down the pit rather than in farming or the pot banks.

He said: "To be deprived of the light of heaven six days in the week-of all social intercourse with friends and of every domestic happiness and yet be satisfied, and choose it in preference to any other, is indeed extraordinary: but so it is. Ask them, and 19 out of 20 will say, 'I’d rather be collier than farmer or potter.'"

The last of the mines may be long extinct but John Lumsdon's work helps bring to life just how much we owe to our forefathers who brushed shoulders with sudden death.

3 comments

Do not forget the men injured who later succumbed to their injuries. My grandfather was hit in the back by a runaway truck at Florence colliery which caused irreparable damage to his kidneys and he died aged 37 leaving a widow and three children. Coal had a terrible human cost which those who treated our miners so callously in recent years, should reflect on and be grateful to those brave men.

my dads uncle, john huxley was killed at silverdale colliery no 14 on 15 feb 1912, he was crushed by a tub. he was married to mary jane palmer and had 6 children. gone but not forgotten. i would love to know more about him